This Selinsgrove Ford Appalachian Mountain Speedweek is forcing Trever Feathers outside his comfort zone.

Three of the eight tracks on the schedule — Clinton County Speedway in Mill Hall, Pa., Path Valley Speedway in Spring Run, Pa., and Bridgeport (N.J.) Motorsports Park — are places the Winchester, Va., driver has never raced before the miniseries.

Two big Pennsylvania racetracks, Bedford and Selinsgrove speedways, are admittedly not his forte. Then throw in trying to understand what makes Tyler Emory’s Rocket Chassis tick, and Feathers has been on his toes this rain-plagued miniseries trying to harness the reins of the Cameron-Mann No. 72 seat that won the Speedweek title in 2023.

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Aside from Mason Zeigler (back-to-back AMS wins), Feathers has been Gregg Satterlee’s closest challenger for the minitour title, stringing together runs of third, 12th-to-sixth, seventh-to-fifth and eighth (led 23 of 40 laps Sunday at Bridgeport before flat left-rear tire) to trail the reigning miniseries champ by 130 points ahead of July 11's rescheduled finale event at Selinsgrove.

“I just told Tyler, we’re going to have to go backwards to go forward. We’re just flat-lining now, third- to sixth-place car, which is respectable in this field of cars,” Feathers said Friday at Bedford. “But we have to do something different to run with (Zeigler) or (Satterlee), or even (Rick) Eckert. I could run the cushion, but I was tight on the cushion. I could run the bottom, but I was kind of free. Aero-pushing real bad, that didn’t help.”

While Feathers is “not focused” on the Speedweek title — “the points title is cool, but right now, I just want to win races,” he added — he'll have a few extra weekends to find more speed aboard the Cameron-Mann machine before the tour ends July 11 at Selinsgrove.

He’s especially bummed Saturday’s miniseries event at Lincoln Speedway in Abbottstown, Pa., and last Sunday’s event at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway rained out and aren’t on the Speedweek schedule, tracks where he’s won.

“All the places that I run good at, that I can run with Satterlee at, are getting cancelled. All the places he runs good at and I suck at, like at Bedford, aren’t,” Feathers said. “We’ve just been mediocre. A lot of that is a difference of my driving style compared to Tyler’s. We’re working hard, we’re all working hard. There’s no give-up. We’re like 10 races into my Rocket career? I think we’re going OK. We’re not up to our expectations.”

Throughout Feathers’s 14-year Super Late Model career, he’s only raced MasterSbilt Race Cars, Barry Wright Race Cars, Longhorn Chassis and Team Zero Race Cars co-designed by the late Scott Bloomquist.

Rocket Chassis-branded cars, albeit speedy, are foreign to him, prompting him to “change my driving style for what these cars want more of.”

“The Barry Wright cars, the Bloomquist cars, and even the Longhorn there toward the end of it, (when he had the China Grove, N.C.-built cars in 2023), I could latch the right-rear and steer in the fuel. These cars don’t like doing that. I talked Tyler into going too tight again (at Port Royal). We did this a couple weeks ago in the other car and it cost us a good run.

“I’m looking for a certain feel that has won me races at I don’t even know many racetracks or how many races. I just need a certain feel to go out and make me comfortable. I just can’t find it in these cars yet. Whenever I get it, the tires come in and I’m tight.”

Emory, who’s raced nothing but Rockets in his Super Late Model career, is taking on the role as Feathers’s crew chief as he recovers from lower-back stem cell surgery, something he enjoys because of his passion for engineering.

While Emory is trying to get Feathers comfortable, he’s also “trying to get him out of his mentality of how he feels the car needs to be.”

“He’s driven a lot of different cars, and a lot of cars I’ve never driven,” Emory said. “I’ve only driven a Lazer (Chassis, built by Bernheisel), and a Rocket. And he’s driven pretty much everything else. It’s two completely different feels. We were supposed to get in each other’s cars and test, and we never got a chance to do it before I hurt my back. I can kind of only go with what his car is doing because I’ve never felt that myself.”

Emory added that Feathers is “very specific” on what he looks for in a race car “because it’s worked for him in all those different cars.”

“I was all over the map on everything because (car owner and Tyler’s grandfather-in-law) Pete (Cameron) let me have free rein on everything and I got to do whatever I wanted to do. And I learned a lot,” Emory said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s also why I have 11 sets of shocks. That’s the cool thing, is that Pete let me learn.

“And I don’t really care how the car feels. I car about the stopwatch. If my wife is telling me the guy in front is gapping me, then something needs to change.”

But in some ways, “looking for a specific feel is great because it’s making” Emory” think about these cars again, instead of just being complacent.”

“After my back got hurt, I really didn’t care anymore,” Emory added. “I was kind of over racing. But putting him in the car has helped me get back into it.”

Feathers “felt like I costed these guys a win” last Saturday at Port Royal where he led 21 of 35 laps before fading to finish third. He felt unassailable until the car got tighter and tighter on him before falling into the clutches of Satterlee and hard-charging Jared Miley in the $5,000-to-win miniseries opener.

“It as really badass the first 10 laps and it was exactly what I needed in the car,” but “we were on a harder right-rear tire and I figured once it came in, I might get too tight,” Feathers said. “The more the right-rear came in, the more locked it became. I was trying to drive in the corner on the fuel and I would break myself loose in the center. If I backed off a little bit, I was tight and I’d end up the track.

“I don’t know, that’s all Tyler’s department. The best thing about is, I think this is a deal we’re going to carry on into next year even when he comes back.”

Emory would like to continue his partnership with Feathers under a two-car operation or closely-aligned partnership. In 2022 when Emory first entered Supers, the Cameron-Mann team made a two-car operation work with Jason Covert.

They envision more of the same with Feathers, who’s in Emory’s No. 72 the rest of 2025. Emory, meanwhile, has ruled himself out of the rest of the season though doctors say the Kings George, Va., driver can start making a few laps in a test session on smooth racetracks.

“Once his back is better and he can get into my cars, the Bloomquist cars, then he’s going to understand why I needed that feel,” Feathers said. “When you get those cars tight, you can pick up the fuel and make moves. These Rocket cars, you have to look for a little mud and momentum the racetrack, and it’s not what I’m used to.”

Simply put, “I just have to change my driving style,” Feathers said.

“That’s the easiest thing to do, is change what I need as a driver in the car and drive the wheels off it like that,” Feathers said. “I feel bad because I cost these guys a win at Port Royal. If it didn’t get tight, I don’t think Satterlee would’ve gotten me.

“I don’t know how maneuverable his car is, but he can make it work and do those banzai moves.”

Feathers would like to better contend with the likes of Satterlee and Zeigler at some point this year, definitely by the time Bernheisel’s Fall Clash rolls around, the new 10-race miniseries that starts Aug. 29 at Bedford and ends Nov. 1 at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway.

“We’re going to get there. And when we do, Tyler is going to manipulate it to make it work for every racetrack,” Feathers said. “That’s when we’re going to be good.”